Christmas fun

Yesterday we popped across London to join a Christmas Day gathering that became one of the most enjoyable of its kind I can recall in recent times. As a group we have a had a number of family health issues in the past twelve months – and also a wedding – and yet the schedule unfolded in as natural and relaxed a fashion as anyone could have wished. We came away glowingly positive afterwards.

From my angle the first plus was that, in traversing halfway across the metropolis both to arrive and later to return home about 8.30pm, the roads were practically devoid of traffic. Being able to drive unhurried and yet smoothly (the lights seemingly by coincidence all in our favour to boot) along a route that in normal circumstances is beset by slow-moving traffic, jams and vehicles holding up the flow in waiting to turn off left or right was a welcome delight all on its own.

Relaxed chaos reigned from the moment we arrived. Long before the main meal was served the noise level had risen to ‘full-on party’ and, once we’d dutifully sat around to watch the Queen’s (instantly forgettable) annual message to the nation, the parlour games gradually began.

At my age I’m afraid that the first one attempted (Articulate) – it came with a board, cards, a dice and mystifyingly complicated rules which, as a first timer and sixty-something I found difficult to grasp – failed to fully satisfy your author even though my team won by a single point.

We later moved on to Name In The Hat, closely related to Articulate in form, but a simpler and noisy contest that our family has played since time immemorial.

Everyone present is obliged to contribute six (folded) pieces of paper containing the names of famous people or characters to a central hat or bowl.

Then in turn, each player on each team takes the bowl and – in a timed 60 seconds – has to pick a piece of paper and give clues to the rest of the team (without ever using any part of the name itself) that hopefully will lead them to identify the person concerned. As soon as someone on their team has called out the correct name, the player can discard the piece of paper and select another at random … and so on … and then, at the end of the sixty seconds … the number of correct answers is added to that team’s score.

And so the hat or bowl is passed around.

Half the fun is of course the wildness, outrageousness or hopelessness of the guesses offered by the team to the player who is ‘giving’ the clues. Another significant percentage lies in the heat generated by the other team claiming the rules have been breached and the arguments as to whether this has actually happened or not.

In all games like this, you can tell a lot about both the success of the game – and hopefully those playing it upon any particular occasion – by the length and intensity of the rules disputes (nobody’s sensitivities are spared, even if they happen to be aged, long-term ill, or indeed suffering from the effects of advanced inebriation) immediately followed by general guffaws of laughter, triumph and excitement as the game resumes.

At this point I feel I must share with Rust readers two of my all-time classic Name In The Hat exchanges.

Some thirty years ago my wife and I were at a highly-convivial dinner party for eight with some family and close friends.

Name In The Hat duly commenced after the dessert and the four couples present formed four teams of two.

The game had been going some time when it became obvious that one couple in particular was having trouble ‘communicating’ with each other.

Early on, in one turn, the man in the couple had plainly picked Stalin as his first name out of the hat. He tried mentioning “Russian leader”, “Russian communist leader” and “Russian WW2 leader” but unfortunately on each occasion his wife – though offering various guesses – was getting nowhere near. More and more exasperated (and with the clock having reached 50 of its allotted 60 seconds), in desperation he broke one of the cardinal rules by exclaiming “Oh, for God’s sake, woman … his name rhymes with ‘Ba-lin’!”

… and she still couldn’t get it. In frustration the husband then twice bashed his head theatrically (Basil Fawlty-style) on the table and they duly scored ‘Nul points’.

Much later on, with the wine flowing rapidly, the same couple were having their turn again, only this time, the wife was ‘describing’ the name and the husband trying to guess it.

I must hold my hand up. On this occasion I was partly to blame because – trying to be both ‘arch’ and clever – I had included Hereward The Wake as one of my names contributed to the hat.

The wife had never heard of Hereward The Wake and so was having extreme difficulty suggesting clues to her husband. Eventually – with the seconds ticking away and having tried everything else – she resorted to holding up three fingers (in order to signify that the name consisted of three words).

That much established, she soon got across the message that the second word was the definitive article.

So far so good.

She then decided it would be best to try and ‘give’ the third word. After thinking for several seconds (whilst be urged to get on with it by her increasingly agitated husband), she finally hit upon:

“Oh … well try this – what’s the first thing you do every morning?”

Back came the husband with “… Oh, I don’t know. Have a XXXX?!”

[Collapse into hysterics of all parties around the table] …